Affective commitment,home-based working and the blurring of work–home boundaries: Evidence from Germany

Analysis of data from the representative German Linked Personnel Panel revealed that, overall, the use of home-based working is associated with a higher affective organisational commitment on the part of employees. However, this is less often the case when the use of home-based working involves the blurring of work–home boundaries. Perceived trust and fairness on the part of supervisors mediates the association between employees' experiences with working from home and their affective commitment. These results show that experiences with home-based working shape employees' perceptions of trust and fairness in their exchange relations with supervisors and thus their affective commitment to the organisation. Employees' experiences with home-based working that reflect its supportive implementation by their employers and supervisors are critical for their commitment. Our results provide the first evidence that in exchange relations between employees and supervisors, perceived fairness is as important as perceived trust.     

Do business customers perceive what salespeople believe? Perceptions of salesperson adoption of innovations

A salesperson's commitment and effort toward an innovation can determine whether the customer agrees to buy it, such that customers' perceptions of such commitment and effort are critical. But these perceptions also might differ fundamentally from the salesperson's self-perceptions of commitment and effort. Therefore, this paper presents a theoretical framework of the relation between salesperson-perceived and customer-perceived commitment and effort, as exhibited by the salesperson while selling an innovation, which represents salesperson adoption. In the framework, job satisfaction factors also exert contingent, moderating effects. The authors gather unique, dyadic data from surveys of salespeople and their (potential) business customers during visits to sell a conventional, incremental innovation, complemented by objective purchase data gathered from company records. Three key insights emerge fromt this study. First, salespeople's own perceptions of their commitment and effort have only moderate influences on customers' perceptions of salespeople's commitment and effort. Second, customers seem to recognize salesperson effort more readily than salesperson commitment, although salesperson commitment has a higher sales performance impact than salesperson effort. Thus, sales managers should seek to encourage and support both the commitment of salespeople and also perceptions of that commitment among customers. Third, while a higher organizational support or job autonomy strengthens customers' perceptions of salesperson adoption, a higher pay satisfaction diminishes it. Thus, firms might need to find ways to increase the support for the salespeople and their autonomy and to reduce salespeople's satisfaction with their (direct) payments. In total, these findings suggest significant scientific and managerial implications.     

The effects of executives' experiences and perceptions on their assessment of potential technological alliances

Researchers have only begun to provide explanations of how top executives' experiences and perceptions influence organizational decisions. Drawing from a broad theoretical base, this study tests the contention that top executives' personal experiences (age, educational background, and work experience), their perceptions of their firms' attitudes toward technology and risk, and their perceptions regarding their firms' past success with collaborative technological development influence their cognitive assessments of potential technological alliances. Results from the study suggest that top executives with a technical education place more weight on the opportunities provided by the alliance than those with other types of education. Moreover, executives from firms that are perceived to emphasize technology and to have had success with technological alliances in the past tend to focus more on the opportunities provided by the alliance and less on the riskiness of the venture. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd     

War for talents—How perceived organizational innovativeness affects employer attractiveness

Recruiting high potentials is the foundation for creating knowledge, innovation and competitive advantages. Unfortunately, many companies face the problem of having a hard time recruiting high potentials in a tightening labor market. To secure future innovation, growth and competitiveness companies must be attractive for potential employees. Within this respect, past research suggests that innovative companies might be at an advantage as they appear more attractive to employees in general and to those with an innovative personality in specific. Hence, HR communication might use an organization's innovativeness within employer branding to attract high potentials. However, current literature falls short to provide empirical evidence on whether and how the communication of organizational innovativeness affects employer attractiveness and especially attracts innovative employees. The results of our scenario-based experiment (n = 322) show that organizations with an innovative product portfolio and a strong innovation culture appear more attractive to potential employees. These effects turned out to be even stronger for employees which are highly innovative as they care a great deal about the organizational innovativeness of the company they work for. Thus, our findings suggest that communicating organizational innovativeness within employer branding is an effective measure not only to improve employer perceptions in general, but also to attract innovative employees.     

Leeway for the Loyal: A Model of Employee Discretion

This article examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist's perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade‐off between the positive effects of discretion on potential output per employee and the negative effects of greater leeway on work effort. In empirical analysis using matched employer–employee data, it is shown that discretion is strongly affected by the level of employee commitment. In addition, discretion is generally greater in high‐skilled jobs, although not without exceptions, and lower where employees are under‐skilled. Homeworking and flexitime policies raise employee discretion. The impact of teamworking is mixed. In about half of cases team members do not jointly decide about work matters, and the net effect of teams on task discretion in these cases is negative. In other cases, where team members do decide matters jointly, the impact is found to be neutral according to employees' perceptions, or positive according to managers' perceptions. There are also significant and substantial unobserved establishment‐level factors which affect task discretion.     

Paradoxical implications of personal social media use for work

New information and communication technologies can have paradoxical implications: they may be liberating and constraining at the same time. This field study examines the direct implications of personal social media use for work on employees’ autonomy and work pressure, and the indirect effects on exhaustion and work engagement. A total of 364 employees of three large multinationals responded to a web‐based survey. Results demonstrate the presence of a paradox, as social media for work is associated positively with both autonomy and work pressure. SNS use has indirect effects on exhaustion and engagement through autonomy, and on exhaustion through work pressure, but not on engagement through work pressure. Furthermore, one's responsiveness to colleagues’ communication decreases the relation between use and autonomy, although not between use and work pressure. Overall, employees seem more likely to be burdened by the use of social media for work than benefit from it, but managing one's responsiveness can help.     

Industrial Relations Climate,Employee Voice and Managerial Attitudes to Unions: An Australian Study

This article examines how employee voice arrangements and managerial attitudes to unions shape employees' perceptions of the industrial relations climate, using data from the 2007 Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey (AWRPS) of 1,022 employees. Controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, regression analyses demonstrate that employees' perceptions of the industrial relations climate are more likely to be favourable if they have access to direct‐only voice arrangements. Where management is perceived by employees to oppose unions (in unionized workplaces), the industrial relations climate is more likely to be reported as poor. These findings have theoretical implications, and significant practical implications for employers, employees, unions and the government.     

Predicting Organizational and Union Commitment: The Effect of Industrial Relations Climate

Research evidence from North America shows that employees can be committed simultaneously to both their union and their company. Moreover, a co-operative industrial relations climate has been seen to be conducive to the existence of higher levels of commitment to both organizations. This study utilized a sample of white-collar unionists in Australia to identify whether union and company commitment could be predicted by the same factors and whether positive perceptions of the industrial relations climate were related to dual commitment. The research found no evidence of dual commitment. Furthermore, company and union commitment were predicted by different factors, and employee perceptions of a co-operative industrial relations climate were associated with higher employee commitment to the company but lower commitment to the union.     

Disability and Perceptions of Work and Management

Matched employee–employer data from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey are used to examine differences in work‐related perceptions between disabled and non‐disabled employees. Even after accounting for differences in personal, job and workplace characteristics, disabled employees are found to hold more negative views on the treatment of workers by managers and, consistent with this, they express less job satisfaction and commitment towards their organization. The influence of disability is also examined across workplaces defined by sector, the presence of disability‐related policies and practices, and employee views of management to explore the role of corporate culture.     

Scientists' commitment to underperforming research projects: linking past success and the social environment

This article investigates scientists' commitment to underperforming research projects based on the concomitant consideration of their past success and social environments. Based on escalation of commitment and network theory, the model hypothesizes that past success triggers the commitment to underperforming projects but that the strength of this influence varies depending on the characteristics of decision makers' social networks. Results from the analysis of 3,072 scenario assessments nested within 96 scientists show that the positive relationship between past success and continued investment in underperforming projects is more positive when the network is larger, when the ties within the network are stronger, and when feedback from network partners is predominantly positive. Surprisingly and contrary to model predictions, results also show that the relationship between past success and scientists' tendency to commit to underperforming projects becomes stronger with lower communication frequency with network partners. This study extends current research by exploring the boundary conditions of the impact of decision makers' social environment on commitment to failing projects. Further, it adds to literature on the downside of success by emphasizing that decision makers, particularly those in some social environments, are driven to commit additional resources to underperforming – and potentially failing – projects. Decision makers acting in such environments should be aware that they are prone to overinvestment of resources, and the findings of this study can help them increase their awareness. Based on this study's results, decision makers (including scientists) can thus better reflect on and improve their research project evaluations. Finally, the findings of this study open up various opportunities for future research.     

Display rule perceptions and job performance in a Chinese retail firm: The moderating role of employees’ affect at work

This study investigates the relationship between emotional display rule perceptions and job performance. Building on theories of emotional labor and ego-depletion, we cast employees’ positive and negative affective states at work as crucial moderators. Results obtained in a sample of 245 frontline service employees and their 63 immediate supervisors from a retail firm in China demonstrate that display rule perceptions were positively related with task and contextual performance among employees experiencing little positive affective states at work, but not among employees experiencing highly positive affect. Moreover, display rule perceptions were positively associated with one aspect of contextual performance (voluntary learning) among employees with little negative affect, whereas highly negative affect buffered this linkage. Taken together, this study highlights performance consequences of employees’ display rule perceptions and uncovers key boundary conditions for these relationships.     

People matter: commitment to employees,strategy and performance in Korean firms

The human element of enterprise is argued to be a vital resource for strategy execution. We show in a study of Korean businesses how an organization’s commitment to its employees’ well‐being (OCE) can aid in the profitable execution of its positioning strategies. We found that OCE, by itself, sometimes has a weakly positive association with return on assets (ROA). But far more important, we found that ROA is strongly and positively influenced by the interaction between OCE and the dedicated pursuit of Porter’s (1980) strategies for achieving competitive advantage: these are cost leadership, marketing differentiation and innovative differentiation. In short, dedicated positioning strategies appear to be executed more effectively where organizations exhibit a high level of commitment to their employees; and conversely, OCE is apt to have a strong impact on ROA only in the context of a dedicated, that is intensive and thorough, positioning strategy. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do supplier perceptions of buyer fairness lead to supplier sales growth?

Despite the growing number of studies focusing on fairness perceptions in buyer–supplier relationships, the pertinent literature mostly focuses on understanding the buyers' perceptions of fairness. In this study, we argue that sellers' perceptions of the fairness of the buyer are equally important but often overlooked. Moreover, existing research fails to provide empirical evidence for examining the long-term effects of fairness on sales growth. We address these gaps by reporting the results of a longitudinal study based on both primary data collected from automotive suppliers in 2009, and objective sales data for these suppliers from an automotive manufacturer over a three-year period after 2009. We employ a latent growth curve model, which reveals that only interactional and distributive fairness have a positive and significant effect on both trust and commitment. Our analysis further reveals that the positive effect of trust and commitment on sales growth is smaller as the supplier's level of dependency on the car manufacturer increases. When the buyer's perception of dependence is considered, these effects are reversed. Several managerial implications of these findings are provided.     

The Impact of Innovative Culture on Individual Employees: The Moderating Role of Market Information Sharing

Current innovation literature provides a very limited understanding of the potential impacts of innovative culture on employees. Building on resource‐based view theory, the authors investigate theoretically and empirically how a perceived innovative culture can be a building block for a firm's competitive resource and advantage by creating superior employee‐level outcomes and how a market information‐sharing process may moderate these effects. The authors identify three distinct types of individual‐level outcomes stemming from an innovative culture. The three outcome variables—job satisfaction, organizational dynamism perception, and firm performance perception—reflect employees’ psychological and cognitive reactions to the process of creating organizational innovation and innovative culture. The authors collect survey data from 3960 individual employees in China. Their findings first show that a perceived innovative culture significantly and positively affects employees’ job satisfaction and perceptions of organizational dynamism and firm performance. Moreover, organizational dynamism perception plays an important mediating role among three employee‐level outcomes by converting job satisfaction into firm performance perception. The authors also find support for the direct, positive effect of a perceived market information‐sharing process on job satisfaction but not on perceptions of organizational dynamism and firm performance. Most importantly, their findings on the significant moderating role of a market information‐sharing system contribute to innovation theory by emphasizing the importance of the innovation/marketing interface: bundling market information sharing and innovative culture together enhances employees’ positive attitudes and perceptions. This result also suggests that examining only the direct effects of innovative culture and market information sharing may lead to incorrect conclusions as to how to manage the cultural infusion process: the market information‐sharing process shows only a weak effect on job satisfaction and no effect on perceptions of organizational dynamism or firm performance. Organizational designs should ensure simultaneous consideration of both variables in the cultural transformation process to enhance employees’ derived benefits in the process of creating an innovative culture. We offer a new insight: a perceived market information‐sharing process may strengthen the effect of an innovative culture on employees’ job satisfaction and organizational dynamism perception, while it may weaken the effect of an innovative culture on firm performance perception. This more nuanced view of market information sharing in the cultural infusion process presents new wisdom and calls for further studies in entrepreneurial innovation.     

Value propositions in a digitally transformed world

Business-to-Business and broader marketing are increasingly influenced by the digital transformation of business, leading to the evolution of new central marketing concepts (e.g., value propositions, value co-creation, customer experiences/journeys, customer centricity, etc.). Therefore, it is not surprising that important emerging marketing concepts, such as value propositions remain ill-defined. We argue herein for the evolution/expansion of the theoretical boundaries of value propositions from largely a firm-centric communication marketing tool toward a concept representing a significant step in an actor's judgment & decision-making processes. A framework emphasizing marketing interactions is developed that reconciles much of the emerging evidence related to goal theory, perceived value, resource sharing, value propositions and their communication, marketing ecosystems, and the value co-creation process. In the proposed framework, value propositions are re-conceptualized as a central within-subject belief about resource-sharing vis-à-vis marketing interactions within the larger process of value co-creation over time. The managerial and research implications of the proposed framework are presented and discussed.     

If You Can Use Them: Flexibility Policies, Organizational Commitment, and Perceived Performance

This study links workplace flexibility policies—formal, informal, and perceived usable—to organizational commitment and self-reported productivity. Professional and technical employees of biotechnology firms were surveyed. Where employees could freely use policies, a positive association with outcomes is found. The article contributes a new measure to capture employees' organizational experience, relevant to work and family research.     

A Two–Tier Wage Structure in a Nonunion Firm

This study examines the perceptions of nonunion workers in a permanent two–tier wage structure. Consistent with the predictions of equity and justice theories, low–tier employees are found to be more likely to perceive the wage structure as unfair, have lower pay satisfaction and organizational commitment, and report poorer worker–management relations than high– tier employees. These attitudes may make nonunion firms more vulnerable to certification campaigns since they are the same factors that have been repeatedly linked to employee intentions to vote for a union.     

Stakeholders,reciprocity, and firm performance

The assumption that economic actors behave in a boundedly self‐interested manner promises fruitful new insights for strategic management. A growing literature spanning multiple disciplines indicates most actors' selfish utility maximizing behaviors are bounded by norms of fairness. Rather than being purely self‐interested, people behave reciprocally by rewarding others whose actions they deem fair and willingly incurring costs to punish those they deem unfair. Economists show that employers who are perceived as distributionally fair by their employees generate comparatively more value due to the positively reciprocal behavior of those employees. The organizational justice literature distinguishes two additional types of fairness assessed by employees. Drawing from both these bodies of work, we employ stakeholder theory to propose how perceptions of fairness result in reciprocity (1) extending to all stakeholders of the firm and (2) affecting firm performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceptions of organizational context and job attitudes: The mediating effect of organizational identification

Informed by social exchange theory and social identity theory, we developed a conceptual model that examines the mediating role of organizational identification in the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational context and their job attitudes. In our model, the antecedents include perceived organizational support (POS), procedural justice, and perceived job insecurity. The outcome variables consist of affective organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and intentions to leave. Our respondents were 591 workers employed in three different firms in China. The results of regression analyses showed that employees’ job attitudes are affected by their perceptions of organizational context and organizational identification. Further, organizational identification was found to mediate the effects of POS on the outcome variables.     

Vision salience and strategic involvement: Implications for psychological attachment to organization and job

Managers' perceptions of their involvement in strategic planning were hypothesized to be positively related with their feelings of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and job involvement. Further, it was also hypothesized that the relationship between strategic involvement and these work-related attitudes would be enhanced to the extent that the managers' felt that a salient strategic vision was guiding the company. We tested these two hypotheses using a sample of upper level managers in a large corporation undergoing a major strategic transformation. With the exception of finding no evidence that vision salience moderated the positive relationship between strategic involvement and job involvement, both hypotheses were supported. With regard to managers' psychological attachment to the organization, the results suggest that there are advantages afforded by involving them in the strategy making process, and that these advantages are magnified to the extent that the involvement occurs within the context of a salient strategic vision.